![You Have to Laugh](https://cdn.magzter.com/1422886351/1723445392/articles/n1PWfjEe01723459593247/Charlie-Chaplin.jpg)
The job of World’s Most Popular Entertainer is not one that seems to lead to a modest estimation of one’s powers and a limited sense of self-worth. Elvis, a decade into his tenure, announced that he had seen Christ and Antichrist battling in the clouds above Graceland; John Lennon, six years into owning one-fourth of the title, was writing ballads about his imminent crucifixion; and Michael Jackson, keeping up the messianic ambitions, felt compelled to invent not just a new race but a whole new gender, of which he could be the only member.
That Charles Chaplin, who got this strange job first and held it longest, never went much beyond planning to cast himself in a movie about the life of Napoleon is, in a way, a tribute to his underlying sense of reality. (He had the stills made for the Napoleon picture; he looks good in the uniform.) Reading Joyce Milton’s new biography of Chaplin, though, which bears the title of “Tramp” (HarperCollins), you wouldn’t know that there was much of anything peculiar or out of the ordinary about Chaplin’s career. To the familiar biographer’s sin of underestimating the type to which her subject belongs, and attributing the habits of a whole class to the traumas of a warped individual, she adds the more original sin of completely missing what in Chaplin’s career was so peculiar that it’s a miracle he managed to emerge even as a normal mixed-up, egocentric artist.
Denne historien er fra August 19, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra August 19, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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![Drug of Choice - The natural world contains many billions of potential medications. The question is how to find the ones that work.](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1818953/4g3NsKO7n1725344270057/crp_medicine-AI-antibiotics-medicines-drugs-origins-drugs-from-Dirt-aloe-vera-morphine-codeine-Ozempic-sources-of-medicine-microbes-medicine-history-Jan-Burian-technology-bacterias-DNA-Robert-Boer-chemical-hardware.jpg)
Drug of Choice - The natural world contains many billions of potential medications. The question is how to find the ones that work.
AI. is transforming the way medicines are made. Bacteria produce numerous molecules that could become medicines, but most of them aren’t easily identified or synthesized with the technology that exists today. A small percentage of them, however, can be constructed by following instructions in the bacteria’s DNA. Burian helped me search the sequence for genes that looked familiar enough to be understandable but unfamiliar enough to produce novel compounds. We settled on a string of DNA that coded for seven linked amino acids, the same number found in vancomycin. Then Burian introduced me to Robert Boer, a synthetic chemist who would help me conjure our drug candidate.
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Screams from a Marriage
‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
![Fly with Me](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/dYeQQzK6j1725880676447/FLY-WITH-ME.jpg)
Fly with Me
The children’s books of Katherine Rundell.
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The Mystery of Pain
Garth Greenwell’s novel of extreme affliction and ordinary happiness.
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The Show Must Go On
What if Ronald Reagan’ Presidency never really ended?
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LAST COFFEEHOUSE ON TRAVIS
For a few months, I stayed with my aunt's friend in Midtown, back when she could still afford to live there.
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Tales from the New World
The novelist Richard Powers considers our changing earth.
![Land of the Flea](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1826433/xk--ld-TU1725873820810/LAND-OF-THE-FLEA.jpg)
Land of the Flea
What America 1s buying and selling.
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The Dark Time
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
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The Post-Moral Age
If conscience is merely a biological artifact, must we give up on goodness?